always tell me the odds

Lessons Learned from MBA Competitions

This past weekend I competed in two different competitions at Darden. The first competition was the Accenture Innovation Challenge, organized by members of the consulting club. In this competition, groups of four worked together to find a solution to a problem posed by Goodwill Industries. Over the course of five hours, we huddled together in a conference room, drew issue trees on chalkboards, and built a slide deck to present our strategic conclusions. This competition was designed in many ways to emulate the consulting process.

The second competition was the Darden Capital Management Stock Pitch competition, organized by Darden Capital Management. In this competition, individuals evaluated equities, performed valuation and analysis, and presented their ideas and thinking. This competition was designed to emulate the process by which you sell your ideas in an investment management institution.

Though the two competitions were focused on different industries and functions, they shared two common themes. I believe that the skills developed by these competitions are fundamental skills necessary for being an effective leader in any organization.

Story telling ability. In both competitions, understanding whom your audience was and how to communicate to them effectively was the key to success. For the Accenture Innovation Challenge, the judges identified the distinguishing factor for the winning three teams as their ability to connect with the Goodwill vision and really speak about the human element of the problem.For the DCM Stock Pitch competition, being able to tell a clear, cohesive story was key. While stock pitches often include multiple reasons to buy a stock and address different risks associated, making sure the thesis was clear was crucial to success. There were several pitches where multiple theses were presented, and this made it difficult for the judges to buy your story.Story telling ability is crucial leading any organization. Great leaders are able to effectively convey their vision and mission to their organizations. At the higher levels, you must tell these stories to shareholders in the market, your board of directors, and your company as well.

Dealing with ambiguity. For both competitions, there was a tremendous amount of ambiguity due to the time constraints. For the Accenture competition, we had only five hours to evaluate the materials provided and come up with a solution. This meant that inherently our solution was not as developed as we would have liked it to be. As a result, the questions asked could be fairly tough. One of the toughest questions they asked was “Summarize your plan in one sentence.” Luckily, one of my team members came up with a succinct statement on the spot. If you had a solid plan but couldn’t come up with concise answers on the spot, it would be really tough for you to succeed in this competition.For the DCM Stock Pitch competition, the primary constraint was finding time to work on my pitch after allocating time for coursework and recruiting. One of the struggles for me was that the pitch I had was not the caliber of pitch did not have the rigor behind it that I would like to have. As a result, even though the questions asked were not really that rigorous, I had not had enough time to think about them beforehand.There is ambiguity in every organization. The ability to prevent ambiguity from affecting your performance is essential. Conveying your ideas confidently in the face of ambiguity is crucial to your ability to convince others to trust your judgment.

Although I still have a lot to learn about both the consulting and investing worlds, the skills and experience I developed through these competitions is applicable across many fields.

Nathan Guo is a chemical engineer and MBA with experience scaling businesses around the world in China, Germany, and Jordan. He has experience in private equity consulting, venture capital, and web development, and also played poker professionally in the past.